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Saturday, 26 September 2015

First it was cold shutdown, then it became meltdown, what if most of it had been expelled in the skies, and if so how long it will take for them to finally admit it to the world...

A group of researchers
says it is highly likely that 70 to 100 percent of fuel has melted at
one of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
plant.

The group includes researchers from Nagoya University.
It has been probing the plant's No. 2 reactor since April of last
year, using a device that uses elementary particles called muons to
see into its interior.

The researchers say the results of
their study show few signs of nuclear fuel at the reactor core, in
contrast to the No. 5 reactor where fuel was clearly visible at its
core.

This led them to believe that 70 to 100 percent of fuel
at the reactor has likely melted.

The researchers say further
analyses are needed to determine whether molten fuel penetrated the
reactor and fell down.

The No.2 reactor is said to have
released large amounts of radioactive substances following the March
2011 accident.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant's
operator, has estimated that part of nuclear fuel at the reactor
remains at its core.

The locations of nuclear fuel will have a
significant impact on the process to remove it from the damaged
reactors, the most difficult step of the decommissioning work.

The
Japanese government and TEPCO plan to
scan the No. 2 reactor once again using a different device.

They
are also preparing to use robots around the reactor.

The group
will announce the results of its study at a meeting of the Physical
Society of Japan in Osaka on Saturday.

Fukushima’s reactor No.2 could have suffered a complete meltdown
according to Japanese researchers. They have been monitoring the Daiichi
nuclear power plant since April, but say they have found few signs of
nuclear fuel at the reactor’s core.

The scientists from Nagoya University had been using a device that
uses elementary particles, which are called muons. These are used to
give a better picture of the inside of the reactor as the levels of
radioactivity at the core mean it is impossible for any human to go
anywhere near it.

However, the results have not been promising.
The study shows very few signs of any nuclear fuel in reactor No. 2.
This is in sharp contrast to reactor No.5, where the fuel is clearly
visible at the core, the Japanese broadcaster NHK reports.

The
team believes that 70 to 100 percent of the fuel has melted, though they
did add that further research was needed to see whether any fuel had
managed to penetrate the reactor

A report in May by the Tokyo
Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which is the plant’s operator, said that
a failure in reactor No.2’s pressure relief systems was one of the
causes of the disaster. The team used a robot, which ventured into the
building and measured radiation levels at various places, while also
studying how much leakage had occurred from the control systems.

TEPCO has used 16 robots to explore the crippled plant to date, from
military models to radiation-resistant multi-segmented snake-like
devices that can fit through a small pipe.

However, even the
toughest models are having trouble weathering the deadly radiation
levels: as one robot sent into reactor No.1 broke down three hours into
its planned 10-hour foray.

Despite TEPCO’s best efforts, the
company has been accused of a number of mishaps and a lack of proper
contingency measures to deal with the cleanup operation, after the power plant suffered a meltdown, following an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 2011.

Recent
flooding caused by Tropical Typhoon Etau swept 82 bags, believed to
contain contaminated materials that had been collected from the crippled
site, out to sea.

“On September 9th and 11th, due to typhoon
no.18 (Etau), heavy rain caused Fukushima Daiichi K drainage rainwater
to overflow to the sea,” TEPCO said in a statement, adding that the samples taken “show safe, low levels” of radiation.

“From
the sampling result of the 9th, TEPCO concluded that slightly tainted
rainwater had overflowed to the sea; however, the new sampling
measurement results show no impact to the ocean,” it continued.

A recent study by the University of Southern California said the
Fukushima disaster could have been prevented. One of the main faults
cited was the decision to install critical backup generators in
low-lying areas, as this was the first place the 2011 tsunami would
strike, following the massive earthquake.

FUKUSHIMA – Dairy farmers who were forced to
suspend business following the 2011 nuclear accident at Tokyo
Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant plan to restart
milk shipments as early as this year, with a new large-scale stock
farm completed in the city of Fukushima on Friday.

Fully supported by the government and the prefectural dairy
cooperative association, the stock farm, with 580 cows, is expected
to become a foothold for rebuilding the prefecture’s dairy
industry, hit hard by business closures and radiation-related rumors.

The farm is operated by a company established jointly by five
dairy farmers from Minamisoma, Namie and Iitate. Kazumasa Tanaka, 44,
from Iitate, has been appointed president of the company.

The company aims to produce 5,000 tons of raw milk annually under
a computer-based control system on the 3.6-hectare (8.9-acre) farm.

“I have chosen to do this because of a sense of responsibility
for the rebuilding of the dairy industry in Fukushima,” Tanaka said
at a completion ceremony. “It will be the happiest thing to cheer
up our peers by our stock farm getting on a growth path.”

Following the triple meltdown at the nuclear plant triggered by
the massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, 76 dairy farmers
had to evacuate and suspend their operations. Among them, only 13
farmers have restarted their businesses.

In the prefecture, annual production of raw milk remains sluggish
at around 80,000 tons, down 20 percent from before the disaster.

The new stock farm was developed and is owned by the prefectural
dairy cooperative, which is subsidized by the central and prefectural
governments.

Tokyo Electric Power Co turned down requests in 2009 by the nuclear
safety agency to consider concrete steps against tsunami waves at the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which suffered a tsunami-triggered
disaster two years later, government documents showed Friday.

“Do you think you can stop the reactors?” a TEPCO official was quoted
as telling Shigeki Nagura of the now-defunct Nuclear and Industrial
Safety Agency, who was then assigned to review the plant’s safety, in
response to one of his requests.

The detailed exchanges between the plant operator and regulator came
to light through the latest disclosure of government records on its
investigation into the nuclear crisis, adding to evidence that TEPCO
failed to take proper safety steps ahead of the world’s worst nuclear
accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

According to records of Nagura’s accounts, Nagura heard TEPCO’s
explanations of its tsunami estimates at the agency office in Tokyo in
August and September 2009 as it was becoming clear that the coastal
areas of Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures were hit by massive tsunami in an 869 earthquake.

TEPCO said the height of waves was estimated to be around 8 meters above sea level and will not reach the plant site located at a height of 10 meters, they show.

But Nagura said he remembered thinking pumps with key cooling
functions, which are located on the ground at a height of 4 meters,
“will not make it” and told TEPCO, “If this is the outcome, you better
consider concrete responses.”

In refusing to immediately act, TEPCO said it would wait for related
studies to be carried out by the academic society of civil engineers,
which it had requested to be done by March 2012.

Nagura also proposed placing the pumps inside buildings to protect
them from being exposed to water, but a TEPCO official told him, “Our
company cannot make a decision without seeing the results of the
(studies by the) society of civil engineers.”

Then another TEPCO official told Nagura, “Do you think you can stop the reactors?” according to the government documents.

Nagura recalled in the documents, “I wondered why I had to be told
such a thing.” But he also admitted that, after all, he only encouraged
TEPCO to “consider” tsunami countermeasures and did not request that it
“take” specific measures.

The Fukushima crisis has revealed how Japan, which had boasted of
possessing the world’s safest nuclear power plants, was ill-prepared
against a severe nuclear accident. Three reactors suffered core
meltdowns after they lost their key cooling functions amid a loss of all
electrical power following a huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

The government-appointed nuclear accident investigation panel has
already issued a final report, and the government is now gradually
disclosing the records of hearings conducted to people involved.

According to NRA (Nuclear Regulation Authority), Tokyo still has fallout from Fukushima nuclear plant.
From their report released on 8/31/2015, 0.88 MBq/km2 of Cs-134/137
falls onto Tokyo this July. The sampling location was Shinjuku.
The comparable data on Fukushima prefecture is not listed on the same report for some reason.
However the reading of Tokyo includes Cesium-134 at the significant level to prove this is from Fukushima plant.
In Miyagi prefecture,
where is in the North of Fukushima prefecture, the fallout level is
0.55 MBq/km2. The fallout density in Tokyo is higher than Miyagi
prefecture.
Other nuclide density is not reported.

Japanese authorities made a troubling decision to let people to return
to their houses in the zone of the Fukushima disaster as there is still
much radioactive contamination in the region, Kevin Kamps of Beyond
Nuclear told RT.

RT:Would you approve of the decision of the
Japanese authorities to let people return to their houses in the zone of
the Fukushima disaster?Kevin Kamps: It is a
very troubling decision, because there is radioactive contamination
still throughout the countryside. In fact they just announced this time
to move back to Naraha under threat of cutting people off from their
compensation payments from Tokyo Electric Power Company [TEPCO].
Ironically, just days later, Typhoon Etau which had with it record
breaking floods redistributed the radioactivity. Not only did bags of
radioactive waste wash out the sea and down rivers, but the entire
landscape- areas that had not been decontaminated – that contamination
then floated with the water down mountain sides, downhill into areas
that had been contaminated like Naraha, but also into areas that had not
been contaminated before. So this radioactivity, as we saw, as we still
see with the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe – the radioactivity from
Fukushima is moving in the environment. So it is a very troubling
decision by the Japanese government to try to create the illusion of
normality when there is so much radioactive contamination still in the
environment.

RT:How long-lasting would the effect of the disaster be?KK:
It depends on the radioactive poison that you’re speaking about
specifically. So, for example, radioactive Cesium-137 has a half-life of
30 years. You have to multiply it by 10 or 20 to get the hazardous
persistence. So that is 300 to 600 years of hazard with radioactive
Cesium-137. Strontium-90 is about the same – 300 to 600 years of
radioactive hazard. And then you have radioactive poisons that are
deadly virtually forever more into the future. For example,
Plutonium-239 a half-life of 24,000 years – that is a radioactive hazard
of 240,000 if not 480,000 years into the future.

RT:How dangerous is the area right now?KK:
Unfortunately we don’t have much information yet after these record
breaking floods just last week, which in a very big way has moved
radioactivity to new places in the environment, or has re-contaminated
places previously decontaminated supposedly. So there is so much that we
don’t know. Certainly there have to be very careful steps taken to
measure the radioactivity in the environment. Any pronouncements by
local mayors or even the Japanese government that they are only
detecting so much radioactivity one meter above the ground - it misses
the point in a very big way. Radioactive cesium, strontium, tritium, and
other radioactive poisons can enter the food supply, and people can eat
the radioactivity or drink it in their drinking water. Very careful
measures to guard against the contamination of the food supply and the
drinking water supply have to be taken. And I don’t know if that is
happening in all places right now.

RT:There
are claims that TEPCO is still concealing some important information
about the Fukushima tragedy. Would you say that this could be true?KK: Absolutely,
TEPCO has been caught so many times even before this catastrophe began,
but certainly after the catastrophe. Just to give one example: this
past February, 2015 Tokyo Electric finally announced, let the public
know, that every time it rained at the site- and they had some major
typhoons hit that site in the last four and a half years - the
radioactivity levels in the ditches went up very significantly. Very
high level radioactive water was flowing down these ditches. It turned
out that there was a very badly contaminated spot on top of the Unit 2
reactor building, which suffered very large scale radioactivity releases
during the catastrophe. They were simply letting this water flow down
the ditches and into the ocean. They kept that quiet not for days, or
for weeks, or for months, but for years. Unfortunately, TEPCO controls a
lot of the information coming out of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear
Power Plant Station. Of course it would be in their interest to try to
keep things quiet that are bad for their public relations. Fortunately,
this truth finally came out. But you have to wonder - how many more
things are they hiding.

‘Disaster by design’

The nuclear plant was doomed from the
very beginning for a number of reasons, including TEPCO’s
underestimation of the possibility of a tsunami in the area, says Costas
Synolakis of the Tsunami Research Center, University of Southern
California. There were two major failures of TEPCO which eventually led to the disaster, he told RT.“First
of all, it starts back when the plant was built in the 1960’s. If you
can believe it – there was a coastal cliff at that location. They took
it down (it was 30 meters high) to minus 4 meters, so that… it would be
easier to put the foundation for the nuclear power plant plus also to
save on cost. Obviously back in the 1960’s they didn’t think about
tsunamis even though tsunamis happened in Japan all the time…So number
two – they didn’t consider the historic reports [about tsunamis],” he said.“TEPCO
had clear chances all along the way; they were warned by Japanese
seismologists and Japanese scientists that there was evidence of big
tsunamis in the area... What is very serious, from my point of view, is
the rationalizations that TEPCO tried to do in the beginning. At one
point they were writing in one report that their analysis was
conservative. Conservative means that they had overestimated the tsunami
– in fact they had underestimated the tsunami. A very famous social
scientist in the US – his name is Dennis Mileti, would call this
‘disaster by design’, meaning that it was just there waiting to happen.”

NHK has learned that the operator of the crippled
nuclear plant in Fukushima plans to sign an agreement with a French
organization to obtain the necessary technology to decommission the
facilities.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, will
initially focus on decontaminating the areas around the reactor
containment vessels.

The removal of molten nuclear fuel will
be the toughest challenge in the decontamination process because of
the extremely high radiation levels.

TEPCO plans to obtain
technical knowhow from the Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy
Commission, or CEA, which is funded by the French government. The
French organization has expertise in dismantling aged nuclear
reactors and fuel-reprocessing facilities.Sources say that under
the agreement, the CEA will help TEPCO to develop remote-controlled
robots that can withstand high radiation levels.

The CEA will
also help with training workers and TEPCO will provide data for the
decommissioning process.

Studies show that even natural background doses of radiation—doses we are normally, and inescapably, exposed to– can give children cancer.
Now people who deny the danger of radiation are wanting NRC to allow
the public to be exposed to 50 to 100 times this amount in the form of
artificial radioactivity, as from nuclear power industry releases. They
want to allow this exposure even for “pregnant women, embryos and
fetuses, and children under 18 years of age.”
Women are more vulnerable to radiation than men. Childhood and in utero life stages are the most vulnerable.
The NRC already allows nuclear power facilities to release enough
radiation to double this dose each year, risking our and our children’s
health. NRC should NOT adopt a “little radiation is good for
you” model. Instead, they should fully protect the most vulnerable which
they are failing to do now.

Previously
I critiqued two examples of advocacy against exclusion-zone policy,
first by the nuclear-energy advocate Jim Al Khalili : http://youtu.be/P-4YJfwF1MQ
And also by a team of professors from MIT who designed a lab experiment
that, based on what prior research had shown, guaranteed the results
they wanted, which they then used to try to persuade the public that
evacuation zones are unnecessary : http://youtu.be/e8YFe6Q08M8
Be sure to also the see the video description for links. It's a
not-uncommon sentiment that the Fukushima evacuations have caused more
suffering than they will prevent, hence evacuations ought not take
place. This is noted since some unfamiliar with post-Fukushima nuclear
advocacy are astonished as they should be to hear anyone suggesting
people should just be left to live in the next nuclear-disaster zone.

As of the end of June, there were 1,134 temporary
storage sites in Fukushima
Prefecture, storing a total of 6.4 million cubic meters of
contaminated waste — equal to filling Tokyo Dome five times over.
However, due to a chronic shortage of temporary storage sites, about
1.8 million cubic meters of contaminated waste and soil have been
kept at decontamination sites as it is impossible to transport them
anywhere else.

The Minami-Soma municipal government in Fukushima Prefecture
plans to return to landowners part of the private land used for the
temporary storage of radioactive contaminated waste, marking the first
time a municipal government has decided not to renew a land lease for a
temporary storage site.

The construction of an interim storage
facility (see below) has been delayed and three-year land leases for
temporary storage sites in the prefecture
have been expiring one after another since early this year. As the
municipal government feels there are no prospects for gaining the
understanding of landowners, it has decided to make the move with six
months left on the existing lease.

Temporary storage sites were
set up to store radioactive contaminated waste and soil collected during
decontamination work following the nuclear crisis at Tokyo Electric
Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. At other locations,
there have been many cases in which landowners and nearby residents have
shown reluctance to have their lands continue to be used as temporary storage sites, due to concerns over radioactive materials.

Under
such circumstances, it is more likely that a plan for the disposal of
radioactive contaminated waste, which has been promoted by the
Environment Ministry, could be stalled.

Temporary storage sites
were set up to store contaminated waste and soil until it becomes
possible to bring the contaminated materials to an interim storage
facility. To secure
land for such sites, the central government signed leases with
landowners in designated evacuation zones. In other areas, relevant
municipal governments signed such leases.

As of the end of June, there were 1,134 temporary storage sites in Fukushima Prefecture, storing a total of 6.4 million cubic meters
of contaminated waste — equal to filling Tokyo Dome five times over.
However, due to a chronic shortage of temporary storage sites, about 1.8
million cubic meters of contaminated waste and soil have been kept at
decontamination sites as it is impossible to transport them anywhere
else.

Minami-Soma has decided to return to landowners a temporary storage
site in the Baba area of the city. It is the second largest such site in
the city, set up in March 2013 by the Minami-Soma municipal government,
which leased about 12 hectares of paddy fields from 41 landowners.

In October 2011, while announcing the construction plan for the interim
storage facility, the Environment Ministry stated that contaminated
waste and soil should be stored for three years at temporary storage
sites. With this in mind, the Minami-Soma municipal government signed a
three-year land lease with individual landowners, thinking that it would
be possible to move contaminated waste out of the temporary storage
sites in March 2016. Currently, bags filled with contaminated waste are
piled up at these temporary storage sites. The amount of waste stored in
the bags totals about 65,000 cubic meters, equal to filling 120
25-meter swimming pools.

However, there has been little progress
in the construction of the interim storage facility due to difficulties
in acquiring the necessary land. The landowners of the temporary storage
site in the Baba area plan to readjust their paddy fields from around
2018, and the municipal government has considered it difficult to extend
the land lease with no prospect of when contaminated waste can be
removed. The municipal government has not yet found another site to
store the contaminated waste after the current temporary storage site is
returned to landowners.

■ Interim storage facility
An
interim storage facility is planned to be built in an area covering 16
square kilometers in a difficult-to-return zone straddling the Fukushima
Prefecture towns of Okuma and Futaba, site of the crippled Fukushima
No. 1 nuclear power plant. The envisaged facility is intended to be able
to store up to 22 million cubic meters of contaminated waste and soil
generated by decontamination work. In March this year, a small amount of
contaminated waste was transported to the facility site on a trial
basis. The law stipulates that contaminated waste should be transported
outside the prefecture within 30 years after it is first stored at the
interim storage facility.

“Chernobyl and Fukushima Studies Show that
Radiation Reduces Animal and Plant Numbers, Fertility, Brain Size and
Diversity… and Increases Deformities and Abnormalities”

Some nuclear advocates suggest that wildlife thrives in the
highly-radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, animals like it, and not
only that, a little radiation for anybody and everybody is harmless and
maybe good, not bad. This may seem like a senseless argument to tackle
were it not for the persistence of positive-plus commentary by nuke
lovers. The public domain deserves better, more studied, more crucial
answers.

Fortunately, as well as unfortunately, the world has two major real
life archetypes of radiation’s impact on the ecosystem: Chernobyl and
Fukushima. Chernobyl is a sealed-off 30klm restricted zone for the past
30 years because of high radiation levels, whereas PM Abe’s government
in Japan has already started returning people to formerly restricted
zones surrounding the ongoing Fukushima nuclear melt-down.

The short answer to the supposition that a “little dab of radiation
is A-Okay” may be suggested in the title of a Washington Blog d/d March
12, 2014 in an interview of Dr. Timothy Mousseau, the world-renowned
expert on radiation effects on living organisms. The hard answer is
included further on in this article.

Dr. Mousseau is former Program
Director at the National Science Foundation in Population Biology,
Panelist for the National Academy of Sciences’ Panels on Analysis of
Cancer Risks in Populations Near Nuclear Facilities and GAO Panel on
Health and Environmental Effects from Tritium Leaks at Nuclear Power
Plants, and a biology professor – and former Dean of the Graduate
School, and Chair of the Graduate Program in Ecology – at the University
of South Carolina.

The title of the Washington Blog interview is:
“Chernobyl and Fukushima Studies Show that Radiation Reduces Animal
and Plant Numbers, Fertility, Brain Size and Diversity… and Increases
Deformities and Abnormalities”

Dr. Mousseau made many trips to Chernobyl and Fukushima, making 896
inventories at Chernobyl and 1,100 biotic inventories in Fukushima. His
mission was to test the effects of radiation on plants and animals. The
title of his interview (above) handily serves to answer the question of
whether radiation is positive for animals and plants. Without itemizing
reams and reams of study data, the short answer is: Absolutely not! It
is not positive for animals and plants, period.

Moreover, low doses of radiation, aka “radiation hormesis”, is not
good for humans, as advocated by certain energy-related outlets. Data
supporting their theory is extremely shaky and more to the point, flaky.

Furthermore, according to the Cambridge Philosophical Society’s journal Biological Reviews,
including reported results by wide-ranging analyses of 46 peer-reviewed
studies published over 40 years, low-level natural background radiation
was found to have small, but highly statistically significant, negative
effects on DNA and several measures of good health.

Dr. Mousseau, with co-author Anders Møller of the University of
Paris-Sud, examined more that 5,000 papers involving background
radiation in order to narrow their findings to 46 peer-reviewed studies.
These studies examined plants and animals with a large preponderance of
human subjects.
The scientists reported significant negative effects in a range of
categories, including immunology, physiology, mutation and disease
occurrence. The frequency of negative effects was beyond that of random
chance.

There is no threshold below which there are no effects of radiation.
With the levels of contamination that we have seen as a result of
nuclear power plants, especially in the past, and even as a result of
Chernobyl and Fukushima and related accidents, there’s an attempt in the
industry to downplay the doses that the populations are getting,
because maybe it’s only one or two times beyond what is thought to be
the natural background level…. But they’re assuming the natural
background levels are fine. And the truth is, if we see effects at these
low levels, then we have to be thinking differently about how we
develop regulations for exposures, and especially intentional exposures
to populations, like the emissions from nuclear power plants….

Results of Major Landmark Study on Low Dose Radiation (July 2015)
A consortium of researchers coordinated by the International Agency
for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, examined causes of death
in a study of more than 300,000 nuclear-industry workers in France, the
United States and the United Kingdom, all of whom wore dosimeter badges.1

The workers received on average just 1.1 millisieverts (mSv) per year
above background radiation, which itself is about 2–3 mSv per year from
sources such as cosmic rays and radon. The study confirmed that the
risk of leukemia does rise proportionately with higher doses, but also
showed that this linear relationship is present at extremely low levels
of radiation.

The study effectively “scuppers the popular idea that there might be a threshold dose below which radiation is harmless.”

Even so, the significant issue regarding radiation exposure for
humans is that it is a “silent destroyer” that takes years and only
manifests once damage has occurred; for example, 200 American sailors of
the USS Reagan have filed a lawsuit against TEPCO et al because of radiation-related illnesses, like leukemia, only four years after radiation exposure from Fukushima.

Japan Moving People Back to Fukushima Restricted Zones
Japan’s Abe government has started moving people back into former
restricted zones surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station
even though it is an on-going major nuclear meltdown that is totally
out of control.

Accordingly, Greenpeace Japan conducted a radiation survey and
sampling program in Iitate, a village in Fukushima Prefecture. Even
after decontamination, radiation dose rates measured ten times (10xs)
the maximum allowed to the general public.

According to Greenpeace Japan:

The Japanese government plans to lift restrictions in all
of Area 2 [2], including Iitate, where people could receive radiation
doses of up to 20mSV each year and in subsequent years. International
radiation protection standards recommend public exposure should be
1mSv/year or less in non-post accident situations. The radiation limit
that excluded people from living in the 30km zone around the Chernobyl
nuclear plant exclusion zone was set at 5mSV/year, five years after the
nuclear accident. Over 100,000 people were evacuated from within the
zone and will never return.2

Commenting on the aftermath of
Fukushima disaster, US climate journalist Robert Hunziker suggests
that the Japanese government has something to hide; "it must be
really big," the journalist notes, referring to the hard-hitting
new secrecy law Tokyo has adopted.

There is something sinister about the Japanese government's optimistic claims that the notorious Fukushima Prefecture
is largely safe for habitation, Los-Angeles based climate journalist
Robert Hunziker notes, warning that scientific data published
by third-party NGOs shows otherwise.

"The immediate direct exposure of radiation over population centers
at Chernobyl was significantly more than Fukushima, where 80% drifted
out into the Pacific Ocean. However, that may be slight solace because,
horrifyingly, nobody knows where the Fukushima melted cores are located;
it's absolutely true, nobody knows whether the molten cores are
within the containment vessels, outside of the vessels, deep in the
ground, or cataclysmically traversing towards the water table," Hunziker
elaborated in his article for CounterPunch.

Meanwhile, Japan's Prime Minister Abe's government is encouraging
people to move back into former restricted zones, claiming that "a whole
lot of the mess outside of the immediate meltdown" has already been cleaned up.

Alas, it's nearly impossible to give such an optimistic signal,
since the Fukushima contamination still remains out of control, the
journalist emphasized.

Citing nuclear expert Eben Harrell, the journalist underscored that
some of the isotopes released during a nuclear catastrophe remain
radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Remarkably, when asked
in 2011 when the Chernobyl site would be inhabitable again, Igor
Gramotkin, General Director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant,
answered laconically: "At least 20,000 years."

"One of the issues in trying to assess the
dangers, as well as timing of recovery, for Fukushima is believability.
Who can be trusted? In that regard, the Abe government's enactment
of strict extraordinarily broad secrecy laws, similar to WWII, with the
threat of prison sentences up to 10 years for any violators
of indeterminately wide-open secrecy laws undermines confidence
in believability of the Japanese government, by definition," Hunziker
pointed out.

The journalist called attention to the latest radiation survey carried
out by Greenpeace Japan, that has indicated that the Japanese government
plans to move people to the areas where they could receive radiation
doses of up to 20mSV annually for many years to come.

According to international radiation protection standards, the
recommended public exposure limit should not exceed 1mSv/year or less
in non-post accidental situations.

"The radiation limit that excluded people from living in the 30km
zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant exclusion zone was set
at 5mSV/year, five years after the nuclear accident. Over 100,000 people
were evacuated from within the zone and will never return," Greenpeace
Japan's report read.

The question arises why the Japanese government turns a blind eye
to the fact that Fukushima residents would be exposed to 20mSV/year
of radiation regardless of international norms and practices.

"Continued exposure to low-level radiation,
entering the human body on a daily basis through food intake, is
of particular consequence," The Green Cross International 2015 Fukushima
Report warned, as quoted by the journalist.

But that is not all, Hunziker stressed, referring to a worrisome report
released by the National Institute of Radiological Science/Japan. The
scientists are beating the environmental drum over the "strange growth
patterns" of fir trees observed in Fukushima.

Furthermore, two hundred US sailors of the USS Reagan which
participated in Operation Tomodachi ("Friends"), providing assistance
to the infamous prefecture when it was struck by the earthquake and
tsunami in March 2011, have filed a lawsuit against TEPCO, General
Electric, EBASCO, Toshiba and Hitachi.

"The lawsuit includes claims for illnesses such as leukemia, ulcers,
gall bladder removals, brain cancer, brain tumors, testicular cancer,
dysfunctional uterine bleeding, thyroid illnesses, stomach ailments and a
host of other complaints unusual in such young adults," Hunziker
underscored, elaborating that the sailors were most likely affected
by radiation.

Inexplicably though, the Fukushima disaster still remains shrouded
in secrecy. Moreover, the Abe government's draconian new secrets law
allows Japanese bureaucrats to conceal information from public and
imprison journalists for "soliciting information that is classified a
secret."

It is obvious that Tokyo has something to hide
and it must be really big, the journalist stressed, asking rhetorically:
"Why else adopt a hard-hitting secrecy law on the heels of the worst
disaster to hit Japan since America dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945?"

TEPCO and their contract partners have been fairly
secretive about what exactly makes the ALPS system work. While they have
provided schematics and some explanation of the systems processes, they
have not said what filtration materials are being used in the systems.Finnish
company Fortum has been providing ion exchange materials to Fukushima
Daiichi since 2012. In their recent press release they explain what some
of those filtration materials used in ALPS are.A proprietary ion exchange material called Nures® includes three proprietary ion exchange materialsCsTreat® removes cesiumsSrTreat® removes strontiumCoTreat® removes cobalt

FORTUM CORPORATION 22 September 2015 at 10.00 EET
Fortum
has received a significant additional order from the American
EnergySolutions for ion exchange materials for purification of
radioactive waters at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in
Japan. Fortum’s ion exchange materials have been used in the Advanced
Liquid Processing System (ALPS) in the power plant area to purify
radioactive waters for the past three years. EnergySolutions’s most
recent order is one of Fortum’s largest deliveries of Nures® ion
exchange materials to date.

“Fortum’s ion exchange materials
effectively remove e.g. caesium and strontium from radioactive water. In
addition to purification effectiveness, another advantage of the Fortum
products is their cost efficiency: the amount of the product needed is
very small compared to the volume of liquids to be purified,” says
Fortum’s Heikki Andersson, Vice President, Power Solutions.

Fortum’s
method significantly reduces the need for intermediate and final
disposal repository space for radioactive liquids. Fortum has sold ion
exchange materials for some 60 different applications around the world.
Fortum has supplied ion exchange materials to Fukushima since spring
2012.
Fortum Corporation Corporate Communications

Further information: Heikki Andersson, Vice President, Power Solutions, Fortum, tel. +358 50 453 4092Nures® product and ion exchange materials
Fortum has over 20 years of experience in treating waste containing
radioactive impurities with Nures® products. Fortum initially developed
the product for use at its own Loviisa nuclear power plant. The
Fortum-developed products are designed to e.g. remove caesium, strontium
and cobalt especially from large volumes of liquids that are
particularly difficult to treat and which typically are very difficult
and expensive to purify. Nures® contains extremely selective ion
exchange materials CsTreat®, SrTreat® and CoTreat® to absorb
radioactivity. A very small amount of these materials are needed
compared to the volume of the liquid to be purified. The purified water
doesn’t contain any harmful substances and thus it can be released into a
water system. Esko Tusa, who has developed and sold products at Fortum
for decades, received the 2015 Finnish Engineering Award for his
accomplishments. The award is granted by Tekniikan akateemiset TEK and
Tekniska Föreningen i Finland TFiF.

Fortum
Fortum’s purpose is to create energy that improves life for present and
future generations. Fortum’s expertise is in CO2-free and efficient
electricity and heat production. The company also offers energy-related
products and expert services to private and industrial customers and
energy producers. Fortum’s main areas of operation are the Nordic and
the Baltic countries, Russia and Poland. In 2014, the annual sales
(excluding the divested electricity distribution business) totalled EUR
4.1 billion, and comparable operating profit was EUR 1.1 billion. The
company employs approximately 8,000 people. Fortum’s share is listed on
Nasdaq Helsinki. www.fortum.com

According to MHLH (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare),
Cs-134/137 has been detected from tap-water of Tokyo since October of
2014. The data is from October 2014 to March 2015. The newer result
hasn’t been announced yet.
The sample was collected from the tap of Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health in Shinjuku.
The density was from 0.00178 to 0.003 Bq/Kg. Cs-134 was detected to prove it is from Fukushima plant.
The analysis was implemented by NRA (Nuclear Regulation Authority).
All the other analyses were carried out by Tokyo Metropolitan
Government Bureau of Waterworks or municipal governments and the lowest
detectable amount was over 0.5 Bq/kg to show none of the actual
readings.

Monday, 21 September 2015

1:02:15 — Buesseler:
“There have been ongoing releases… being maintained at
higher levels… The groundwater is almost
impossible to stop, so that will
continue
for decades… very hard to contain. Ice dams, things you can
engineer to stop them, have never been done on this scale before, so
it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen.”

1:09:30 — Audience Q&A:
“Can anyone — scientists, physicists, anyone — really estimate
the levels that are coming out of Fukushima on a daily basis? This
rain event… how could anyone possibly estimate what is
going… it’s disingenuous … to
make these kind of assumptions — that it ‘probably’ won’t be
a problem in the future. How can anyone say that? It’s
never happened before… I don’t know where these predictions can
really be nailed down, and was wondering your opinion on that as a
couple of ‘good scientists’ (laughs).”

1:11:00 — Buesseler: “Fair points. It’s never
happened before, it’s somewhat
unpredictable and dynamic… There’s certainly
not enough information. I was very frustrated
after the rain event to find almost no information
about the amount and levels that were in the ocean… There are some
monitoring sites right in the harbor, and you can actually see
the level of cesium go up from 1,000 of my units to 3,000 —
so there was an impact. How long that’s going to continue?I can’t tell you… How it’s going to
change in the future? We hope it gets back down to the levels that
were near zero, but it never will be. It’s
going to be — for decades, anyway — a site of continuous
release… that’s what keeps me up at night, are
continuous leaks that could happen at that site.”

PM Abe’s specific maneuvers towards rehabilitation give the
appearance that the Fukushima full-blown nuclear meltdown is relatively
minimal in comparison to Chernobyl’s disastrous explosion of 1986. After
all, to this day, Chernobyl after 30 years is still a 30km “exclusion
zone” where nobody is allowed due to excessive levels of radiation.

Meanwhile, back in Japan, PM Abe is moving people back into former restricted zones four years after the fact.

It remains an open question as to whether the Fukushima aftermath
will be worse than Chernobyl. After all, the China Syndrome may be
actively at work at Fukushima and as such could last over many
lifetimes.

Still, the immediate direct exposure of radiation over population
centers at Chernobyl was significantly more than Fukushima of which 80%
drifted out into the Pacific Ocean.

But, that may be slight solace because, horrifyingly, nobody knows
where the Fukushima melted cores are located, nobody knows; it’s
absolutely true, nobody knows whether the molten cores are within the
containment vessels, outside of the vessels, deep in the ground, or
cataclysmically traversing towards the water table.

Regardless, PM Abe’s directive appears to be: “No problem, we’ve cleaned up a whole lot of the mess outside of the immediate meltdown… so, move back into former restricted areas.”
Still, it’s nearly impossible to give an all-clear signal at this
stage, especially with the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station
containment vessels completely out of control with wild atom-splitting
rogue radionuclides spewing into the Pacific Ocean, and who knows where
else (Einstein must be spinning in his grave).

The China Syndrome Worry
“While a molten reactor core wouldn’t burn ‘all the way through to
China’ it could enter the soil and water table and cause huge
contamination in the crops and drinking water around the power plant.
It’s a nightmare scenario, the stuff of movies. And it might just have
happened at Fukushima,” Eben Harrell, Was Fukushima a China Syndrome?
Time Magazine, May 16, 2011.

If Chernobyl is a leading indicator of Fukushima’s future, “Chernobyl
offers many lessons about what Princeton University engineering
professor Robert Socolow calls the ‘afterheat’ of a nuclear disaster,
but it’s the generational lesson that’s most important. Because some of
the isotopes released during a nuclear accident remain radioactive for
tens of thousands of years, cleanup is the work not just of first
responders but also of their descendants and their descendants’
descendants. Asked when the reactor site would again become inhabitable,
Ihor Gramotkin, director of the Chernobyl power plant, replies, ‘At
least 20,000 years,” Eben Harrell, Apocalypse Today: Visiting Chernobyl,
25 Years Later, Time Magazine, April 26, 2011.

As of June 12th, 2015, the Abe government is returning residents to
the Iitate village in Fukushima’s Prefecture four short years post the
nuclear plant meltdowns, and by the upcoming 2018 year, the prime
minister is eliminating state compensation to victims.

Not only that, but since August 2015, PM Abe is reopening nuclear
facilities, the Sendai No. 1 reactor has already resumed full-scale
commercial operations.

Contrarywise, according to former PM Naoto Kan, who was prime
minister during the Fukushima disaster: “I now consider nuclear energy
to be the most dangerous form of energy, and the risks associated with
it are too great for us to continue generating atomic power,” Former
Japanese PM Naoto Kan: Fukushima Radically Changed my Perspective,
Deutsche Welle, Feb. 25, 2015.
One of the issues in trying to assess the dangers, as well as timing
of recovery, for Fukushima is believability. Who can be trusted? In that
regard, the Abe government’s enactment of strict extraordinarily broad
secrecy laws, similar to WWII, with the threat of prison sentences up to
10 years for any violators of indeterminately wide-open secrecy laws
undermines confidence in believability of the Japanese government, by
definition.

On the other hand, respected third-party NGOs seem more reliable, if
only because they do not have an axe to grind, no broad open-ended
secrecy laws, no threats of prison sentences, no scare tactics, no
public demonstrations in opposition, no lost revenues, no cleanup costs,
no threats to human health, no threats to marine life, and no
connections to the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Greenpeace Japan conducted a radiation survey and sampling program in
Iitate, a village in Fukushima Prefecture. Even after decontamination,
radiation dose rates measured ten times (10xs) the maximum allowed to
the general public.

According to Greenpeace Japan: “The Japanese government plans to lift
restrictions in all of Area 2 [2], including Iitate, where people could
receive radiation doses of up to 20mSV each year and in subsequent
years. International radiation protection standards recommend public
exposure should be 1mSv/year or less in non-post accident situations.
The radiation limit that excluded people from living in the 30km zone
around the Chernobyl nuclear plant exclusion zone was set at 5mSV/year,
five years after the nuclear accident. Over 100,000 people were
evacuated from within the zone and will never return.” (Greenpeace Press
Release, July 21, 2015).

So, Chernobyl’s 5mSV/year radiation limit morphs into the possibility
of 20mSV radiation each year for some areas of Fukushima, subjecting
residents to what?

According to Green Cross International, founded in 1993 by Mikhail
Gorbachev, who was president of the Soviet Union when Chernobyl
exploded: Both Chernobyl and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
disasters are categorized as Level 7 events defined as a major release
of radioactive material.

“However, the number of people affected by radiation in Japan has
tripled when compared to Chernobyl, says Nathalie Gysi of Green Cross
Switzerland… water leakage at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant remains a
problem four years after… There continue to be rising doubts over the
safety of seafood, such as radioactivity levels in tuna and other fish.”
(Green Cross Int’l March 11, 2015).

The Green Cross International 2015 Fukushima Report was prepared
under direction of Jonathan M. Samet, MD, University of Southern
California professor Keck School of Medicine and chair Department of
Preventive Medicine, using the same standards as a similar 2012 study of
Chernobyl.
According to the report: “Continued exposure to low-level radiation,
entering the human body on a daily basis through food intake, is of
particular consequence.”

Morphologically Defective Fir Trees
According to the National Institute of Radiological Science/Japan
(“NIRS” est. 1957 as Japan’s only institute of radiology science) fir
trees in Fukushima are exhibiting “strange growth patterns,” meaning the
trees are stunted and showing morphological defects, in particular
bifurcation or the splitting of a tree body into two parts at the tip.
Thus, further normal tree growth is stopped dead.

Fir trees normally extend upward in growth patterns with two or more
branches each year. However, 98% of inspected fir trees within a 3.5km
area of the Fukushima damaged nuclear plants have severe defects. NIRS
believes radiation causes abnormalities of fir trees “without a top
bud,” hence no more normalized growth. Results of inspected trees found
125 out of 128 abnormal.

Thus, begging the question: If tree growth is stunted/deformed within
3.5km of the damaged nuclear plants, what’s the analogous impact on
people?

Missing Birds
According to CBS News (April 16, 2015): “Birds are becoming a rarity
around the damaged nuclear site… dramatic reductions… in terms of
swallows in Fukushima, there had been hundreds if not thousands in many
of these towns where we were working. Now we are seeing a few dozen…
It’s just an enormous decline,” (Dr. Tim Mousseau, biologist, University
of South Carolina, Dwindling Bird Populations in Fukushima, sc.edu,
4/14/15).

Fukushima Myths
Chris Harris, a former senior nuclear reactor operator for over three
decades and currently a nuclear consultant, claims Fukushima is an
extinction level event: Containment is a myth, there isn’t any; cold
shutdown is a myth; cooling is a myth because there is no way to measure
cooling when nobody knows where the nuclear fuel is located; waste
processing is a myth; cleanup is a myth because it’s a “waste generation
facility” that won’t stop.

Voices Within Japan
According to Yauemon Sato, the ninth-generation head of a sake
brewery, since 1790, and the president of Aizu Denryok, an electric
utility: “You know the caldron of hell? You will be sent to hell and
will be boiled in that caldron if you do evil. And there are four such
caldrons in Fukushima…

And the disaster has yet to end. It continues to
recur every day. More than 300 tons of water, contaminated with intense
levels of radioactive substances, are being generated every day,” The
Asahi Shimbun, May 1, 2015.

Hiroaki Koide, professor (retired) at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute reacts to PM Abe, as of April 24, 2015:
“The Prime Minister [said Fukushima] had been brought to a close. My
reaction on hearing his words was, ‘Stop kidding.’ Reality is, though 4
years have passed, the accident has not yet been brought to a close at
all… The Japanese government has issued a declaration that this is an
emergency situation. As a result, normal laws do not have to be
followed. What they are saying is that, in these very high radiation
exposure level areas, they have basically abandoned people to live
there. They’ve actually thrown them away to live there… The Cs-137
that’s fallen onto Japanese land in the Tohoku and Kanto regions, so
much so that this area should all be put under the radiation control
area designation [the Kanto region includes Tokyo and is home to over 40
million people].”

Footnote on Cs-137: Cesium-137 is one of the most problematic fission
isotopes as it easily moves and spreads in nature and has a half-life
of 30 years. It is deadly dangerous, for example: The Kramatorsk
Radiological Incident of 1989 in Ukraine a small capsule of Cs-137 was
discovered inside concrete walls of an apartment building, probably part
of a measurement device, lost and accidentally mixed with gravel used
to make concrete. For over 9 years two families lived in the apartment.
By the time the capsule was discovered, 6 residents had already died
from leukemia.

Fortunately for PM Abe, unfortunately for radiation victims,
radiation is a silent destroyer that slowly progresses over time. In
fact, it takes 5-40 years for the incubation period to take hold. Next
year is the 5th year.

Nevertheless, when hit by powerful rapid radiation exposure, too much
too soon, physical damage occurs relatively quickly, now experienced by
sailors of the USS Reagan that served in Japan in 2011.

U.S. Sailors File Lawsuit
Two hundred U.S. sailors of the USS Reagan have a pending lawsuit
filed in San Diego against TEPCO, General Electric, EBASCO, Toshiba and
Hitachi through the law offices of Bonner & Bonner, Sausalito, CA.
The plaintiffs won a crucial battle in the U.S. District Court/San Diego
last year, allowing the case to move forward.

“The lawsuit is based on the sailors’ participation in Operation
Tomodachi (meaning “Friends”), providing humanitarian relief after the
March 11, 2011 devastation caused by the Earthquake and Tsunami. The
lawsuit includes claims for illnesses such as leukemia, ulcers, gall
bladder removals, brain cancer, brain tumors, testicular cancer,
dysfunctional uterine bleeding, thyroid illnesses, stomach ailments and a
host of other complaints unusual in such young adults. The injured
servicemen and women will require treatment for their deteriorating
health, medical monitoring, payment of their medical bills, appropriate
health monitoring for their children, and monitoring for possible
radiation-induced genetic mutations,” Press Release, The Law Offices of
Bonner & Bonner, Sausalito, CA.

According to the press release, up to 70,000 U.S. citizens were
potentially affected by the radiation and will be able to join the class
action suit, which alleges that TEPCO deliberately lied to the public
and the U.S. Navy about radiation levels at the time the Japanese
government was requesting help.

Therein lies a prime example, although only alleged, of why official
sources in Japan cannot be trusted. Moreover, as far as convincing
evidence goes: How is it that a disproportionately high number of very
young naval personnel, all from the same ship, have severe medical
problems like leukemia and brain cancer?

Furthermore, according to Charles Bonner, Esq.: Additional plaintiffs
with serious aliments from radiation are continuing to come forward.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster is a grim tragedy that is extremely
difficult to fully understand or gain trustworthy information, in large
measure because the Japanese government instituted a new secrecy law,
Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, Act No. 108 that
is extraordinarily broad and provides up to 10 years in prison for
release of “state secrets,” which may be subjectively, not objectively,
defined by government bureaucrats… oh, isn’t that just grand!
Essentially, Japan surreptitiously institutes news blackouts of any
information that government employees don’t like, carte blanche.

“On Dec. 10, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s new special secrets law took
effect despite overwhelming public opposition. The new law gives
bureaucrats enormous powers to withhold information produced in the
course of their public duties that they deem a secret — entirely at
their own discretion — and with no effective oversight mechanism to
question or overturn such designations.

The law also grants the
government powers to imprison whistle-blowers, and prohibits disclosure
of classified material even if its intention is to protect the public
interest. This Draconian law also gives the government power to imprison
journalists merely for soliciting information that is classified a
secret,” Abe’s Secrets Law Undermines Japan’s Democracy, The Japan
Times, Dec. 13, 2014.

Once again: “This Draconian law gives the government power to
imprison journalists merely for soliciting information.” For merely
soliciting information, for merely soliciting information, gives the
government power to imprison journalists for merely soliciting info….
some footprints should never stop.

“Susumu Murakoshi, president of the Japan Federation of Bar
Associations, says the law should be abolished because it jeopardizes
democracy and the people’s right to know. Meiji University legal scholar
Lawrence Repeta agrees with Murakoshi,” Ibid.

What democracy?

Thus, on the surface, by all appearances, the government of Japan has
something to hide. It must be really big. Why else adopt a hard-hitting
secrecy law on the heels of the worst disaster to hit Japan since
America dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Japan’s
citizenry really should expect consolation rather than aggravation,
intimidation, and terrorizing by their own government.

At the end of the day, George Orwell’s 1984 has captivated a radiantly glowing ancient country.

Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s stricken Fukushima No. 1
power plant has released rainwater tainted with radioactive
substances into the Pacific Ocean at least seven times since April.

The Fukushima Prefectural Government, pressured by worried
residents and fishermen, has pressed the Nuclear Regulation Authority
to set maximum radiation limits for rainwater releases, but the
regulator hasn’t acted yet, citing the lack of specific laws on
radioactive rainwater.

The plant’s K channel, a gutter that was built to drain
rainwater accumulated around the six reactors, leads directly to the
sea. After rainwater was found tainted with radiation in April,
Tepco, as a temporary fix, installed eight pumps and a special
underwater curtain in its artificial bay to segregate the water from
the open ocean.

With the pumps and the curtain, Tepco claims it can keep
radioactive runoff within the bay as long as the rainfall stays at 14
mm per hour or less. But on Aug. 17, rainfall at the plant exceeded
18 mm per hour, and some untreated rainwater overflowed the K channel
and got into the ocean. The same thing happened again on Sept. 9 and
11, amid flooding in the Kanto and Tohoku regions triggered by
Typhoon Etau.

When the drainage system is overwhelmed by heavy rain, it is
difficult to measure the tainted water and its radiation level, the
utility said.

In May 2014, when Tepco succeeded in measuring rainwater on the
premises, the cesium-137 level was gauged at 770 becquerels per
liter, or over eight times the 90-becquerel limit for water the plant
can release into the sea.

To rectify the situation, Tepco has been trying to change the K
gutter’s path so it will flow into the artificial bay instead. But
the rerouting work will take until March 2016.

While Tepco says the problem will be solved in six months,
prefectural officials are demanding Tepco resolve the problem as soon
as possible, because if the leaks are allowed to continue throughout
the typhoon season, public distrust in the government will deepen,
making the decommissioning process even more difficult.

Fishery officials are meanwhile worried that their industry could
be damaged further if the unregulated rainwater releases continue.

The prefecture is specifically asking that a new pump be installed
close to the source of the tainted rainwater, but Tepco has been
reluctant, saying such a pump is structurally impossible to install
because the part of the drainage system where tainted water is
leaking from is underground.

Tepco has been cleaning the drainage gutters on a regular basis to
reduce the radiation levels, but to no avail.

Kiyoshi Takasaka, a prefectural expert on atomic power, wants the
NRA to place radiation limits on rainwater immediately.

However, the NRA’s position is that there are no laws that
regulate radiation-tainted rainwater and therefore it cannot set
numerical limits. One industry source said doing so would require
revisions to existing laws, which will take a lot of time.

“I’m worried because we don’t know how much
radiation-tainted rainwater has leaked out,” said Tomomitsu Konno,
a 56-year-old fisherman in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture. “Tepco
should fully investigate the problem and show the results to the
fishermen.”

According to Fukushima sewage public corporation, this July over
1,000 Bq/Kg of Iodine-131 was detected in dry sewage sludge. The sewage
plant is located in Da-te District of Fukushima prefecture.
High level of I-131 was measured this May, however this reading of
July is the highest density of this year. (cf, Significant level of
I-131 detected from dry sludge of Fukushima sewage plant after rain in
May [URL])

I-131 was detected from the samples collected from 7/9/2015 to 7/29/2015.

The highest reading was 1,038.4 Bq/Kg of 7/11/2015. The highest
density of Cs-134 was also detected, which was 44 Bq/Kg the same day. It
rained on 7/8/2015 but the precipitation was only 10.5 mm.

Also in another sewage plant in Koriyama city, 889 Bq/Kg of I-131 was
detected from dry sewage sludge. This is also the highest reading of
this plant. I-131 kept on being detected for 15 days of this July.

Thursday, 17 September 2015

As I stood against sensationalists and repeated hoaxers, mostly
Youtubers, who are only harming the antinuclear cause and the Fukushima
victims cause, lately those people have sent me insults and threats of
violence, calling me a pro-nuke shill hiding behind my D’un Renard
alias,, and not showing my face etc. I presently became the focus of
those people hate and slurs for calling their repeated hoaxes what it
is: B.S., mental pollution, sensationalism and disinformation. I did it
not to look for trouble, but because I believe truth is important,
primordial, crucial.
Only by sharing the true facts, we will win, as true facts stand, stay.
B.S. flies high first but stinks later when it is quickly debunked

Consequently, for the first time, i will share publicly my personal story, why and how I awoke and became antinuclear.
A little about myself, I am Hervé Courtois, 60 years old, Picardie, France.
For
4 years and half I used a nom de plume "D'un Renard", which in french
means "from a fox", because around my place there are many forests and
many foxes which I could hear at night while blogging. I did not want to
used my true identity because I wanted to protect the identity of my
daughter in Japan when I started to blog on internet about the Fukushima
catastrophe by fear of getting her in troubles with the Japanese
government, and also by fear that Japanese government could bar me to
enter Japan to visit my daughter. Few months ago I decided finally to
use my real name.
I lived very long time in Asia, 37 years, in
Japan, Korea, Hong-Kong and the Philippines, I came back home to France 6
years ago.

My 33 years old daughter, French-Japanese, lives
in Iwaki city, Fukushima prefecture, 50 kms South from the nuclear plant
of Fukushima Daiichi. She was born in Paris in 1982, but grown up in
Fukushima, she is 33 years old, unmarried, no children, does not want to
give birth anymore by fear of possible tetragenic birth due to
radioactive contamination thru her living environment and the
contaminated food.

Three months after the start of the
Fukushima catastrophe, I went to visit her there in Iwaki city,
Fukushima for the full month of June 2011, to check how she was and how
was the real situation there.
On location I was surprised how to
find that the people on location who should be the most at risk were
kept uninformed of the real situation and of the dangers for their
health, for their life, by the Japanese government.
I became aware
that there was then an imposed omerta on the media by the Japanese
government. All media repeating the same tune, don't worry be happy,
there is no danger, the situation is under control. The reactors are now
in cold shutdown.
I keep wondering how reactors having exploded could be in cold shutdown. Smelling a rat.
Most
people I met were kept in dark of the real situation, informations were
totally controlled, filtered, censored, twisted, the people lied to.
Just as the french people in 1986 were lied to by their own government
telling them that the Chernobyl plume was not coming towards France,
that it would not reach France, that they were safe, most of the people
not taking protection measures to regret it later with rampant thyroid
cancer allover Eastern France.

When I came back from Japan to
France, the most nuclearized nation in the world per square kilometer
and per inhabitant, the nuclear industry Areva being owned by the State,
the French government, of course the french media were also censored
about Fukushima by the French government, telling to French people that
the Fukushima disaster was over, that it had ended in March 2011, that
it was nowall under control. I found at home the same omerta, that I had
met in Japan.
I decided to search for informations on internet,
search for knowledge, to learn about nuclear, so that I could better
understand what was truly happening, what was hidden, unsaid, covered
up, so that I could then inform my daughter and help her to know the
facts, the dangers and how to protect herself.

My life changed
and was never the same again, it became almost a full time occupation,
many hours days and nights on internet to find informations and to share
them to other people, discovering gradually the lies, what had been
hidden about Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile islands and other hidden
nuclear catastrophes, so many. I lost my innocence about nuclear.
I
became angry and quite involved as an activist both on the net but also
in real life. I became a a member of Sortir du Nucléaire France and of
Greenpeace France,
On March 2012 I was the one to organize in Paris
the 1rst year Fukushima Anniversary, a rally in front of the Paris main
cityhall, with french antinuclear activists combined to some Japanese
members of the Paris Japanese community, a Japanese TV crew coming to
film our event.

Since the end of June 2011 up to now I
continue to blog on the net on various blogs and on some Facebook
antinuclear groups and pages that I founded.
I have therefore been
following the Fukushima catastrophe day and night from the right
beginning, and I am very well aware of the real dangers of Fukushima and
of nuclear, my own blood and flesh French-Japanese daughter being one
of the victims of nuclear in Fukushima, l will therefore continue to
fight nuclear until it ends or until my last breath.
I am opposed to
all pro-nuclear and their paid shills, but I am also oppose to those
irresponsable people who produce hoax after hoax about Fukushima to
satisfy their attention-glory-narcissist craving and their donations
milking. All those people in different ways are harming the truth,
harming our antinuclear cause.
I never asked donations not wishing to
become an activist for sale, I do it for the love of my daughter, and
because it is right to do it, not for money nor glory.

Nuclear
is more than bad, we will only win by exposing its its ugly real
nature, the true real solid facts. We won’t win by spinning
sensationalism or hoaxes, which only become ammunitions for the pro-nuke
shills to discredit us and the true dangers of nuclear in the mind of
the general public.

We need everybody to wake up and to get
their hands on deck, to ban all kinds of nuclear, civil and military,
allover the world, to free our planet from this evil criminal industry.

In front of the gates of Fessenheim Nuclear plant at the end of the day, Naoto is standing at the center, all the others are solid Fukushima Watchers and Antinuclear activists, friends.

European No to Nuclear Rally at Fessenheim Nuclear plant on March 9, 2014 At Fessenheim, Alsace, France

First 9 bridges upon the Rhine River, between France and Germany, were occupied, then all the people
from the bridges regrouped to the Fessenheim Nuclear Plant, 9500
people participating.

The largest groundwater in Europe is
located right under the Fessenheim Nuclear plant: the Rhine aquifer,
nearly 80 billion cubic meter of water between Basel and Mainz, which
provides 80% of the drinking water and more than half of the industry in
that area. What would happen in the event of a serious accident?

The Honored guest of that day was Naoto Matsumura, for his heart and
spirit in caring for the abandoned animals within the 20kms radius No
Man's Zone of Fukushima. The next day Naoto was delivering his Fukushima testimony at the Europen Parliament in Strasbourg city in front of all the European MPs.

It was a terrific feeling, meet again some old friends and making some new friends.